Machine Dreams

sparrow of a kid.
    I heard Mitch walking on the concrete floor below. He tapped with his pencil on the water tank, a small reverberating sound that echoed itself. I looked over the edge of the attic opening and saw him figuring on a tablet, holding his OCD manuals and a tape measure. He wore the same khaki clothes at home that he’d worn at the plant, before Clayton died and the business was sold. Now he wore shirts and ties to work and called on customers; I think he hated selling. Too proud not to resent doing it, and at his age. He must have been fifty. I was thirty-five, but I didn’t feel young. Looking at him from above, I felt so distant I could have been watching from another planet. He stood inspecting the door to the patio, so involved he was unaware of the light on over his head. He turned abruptly and strode away into the garage.
    I stepped back, switched off the light, and took up the bulky clothes in the dark. The ladder was difficult. I held on with one hand and was halfway down when I got stung. Hornets always nested in the attic in summer, but I’d supposed they were gone by now. It was ludicrous; I wasn’t willing to drop the clothes on the dirty floor and then sort them all again, and I couldn’t movemy hand. I called to Mitch but he must not have heard. So I climbed down while the hornet kept stinging me, unable to see over bundled wools and corduroys, and walked into the kitchen where I could put them down.
    My hand felt as though it were on fire; there would be some welts. Mitch came in and I stepped behind the heaped ironing board to give him room in the narrow kitchen.
    He put a list on the table. “I can make an airtight shelter back there—rig up an air-pipe vent and hand pump through one of the windows, then brick them up with cement block. We’ve got the water tank we could siphon to supplement the containers, and I’ll need about a hundred sandbags to block the doorways.”
    “Isn’t there room for us in the town shelter? We’re only two miles away.”
    “They recommend having your own if you can.” He put the manuals on the ironing board in front of me. “You need to read these.”
    “How can we afford—”
    He nodded once. “I’ll need your help on this.”
    What he meant was money. I looked down at the booklet and saw a gray and yellow illustration of a man shoveling dirt onto a door. The door was propped at an angle against an outer wall. His sweater and the dirt were yellow, as though he were already covered with dust.
A Plan But No Time: Pile the dirt from the trench on top of the doors.
I scanned the words, not really seeing them.
Try to get in a shadow; it will help shield you from the heat.
The ironing board was piled high and the supper dishes were still on the table; my hand was throbbing and I felt almost dizzy with frustration. I turned a page and read:
Time But No Plan: Fill buckets, sinks, a bathtub, and other containers with water.
    “I can’t read these,” I said, “I’ll be up until midnight as it is. And the kids need coats this month. I can’t give you any help.”
    For a minute he just looked at me. Then he leaned toward me over the ironing board. He was a lot bigger than me and seemed huge. “Damn it to hell,” he said. “I should know better than to expect help from you on a goddamn thing.”
    The door to the breezeway was behind me, but I wasn’t going to turn around and leave my own house. “You’ve got no right totalk to me like that. For your information, I’ve paid half the bills in this house and bought all the kids’ clothes for two years.”
    “And don’t you think you’re goddamn great for every penny you’ve spent!”
    So we started. You remember his short fuse—breathing heavily and shaking with rage in seconds. That’s probably why he never raised a hand to you and left all the discipline to me—he got too angry to trust himself. I think I shoved the ironing board against him to get out from behind it. Then we were walking back through the house, just shouting. I was trembling but knew enough not to move too quickly; almost by instinct, he would have reached out and grabbed me.
    I realized I was headed toward the back room, our bedroom, and I walked into the bathroom and locked the door.
You’d better stay the hell in there
, he yelled. There was silence except for his voice. I imagined you and Billy in your rooms, listening. I heard you open your door ever so quietly and knew you were afraid.
    I told him